No. 12: Stanford

Imagine Alabama’s football coach stepping to the podium at Southeastern Conference media days and saying, “in case you don’t know, my name is Nick Saban. I’m the head coach here at Alabama.”

Or Ohio State’s Urban Meyer doing the same at the Big Ten even and then spelling his name “U-R-B-A-N” to reporters.

Yet, one prominent west-coast coach, at his conference’s media day, actually considered pinning his name tag to his shirt.

“In case you don’t know, my name is David Shaw,” David Shaw said. “I’m the head coach here at Stanford. You never know if there’s people from out of town.”

This tells you all you need to know about Stanford, Shaw, the Pac 12, and why Cardinal football can’t swing the hammer hard enough to ring the bell at the county fair. The rest of this article is available to subscribers only – to become a subscriber click here.

About The Author

Dufresne, spent 35 years at the Los Angeles Times covering numerous sports. Over the last two decades he emerged as their national college football and basketball columnist. He and his alter-ego Rankman have been putting college teams in their place ever since.

The great Johnny Unitas told his teammates before taking the field to play the NY Giants for the NFL championship, “Talk’s cheap, let’s play ball.” Shaw is old school in a very refreshing manner; Stanford avoids the hype and simply goes out and plays ball. Unitas would be proud of the Cardinal program that David Shaw leads in a very quiet, calm manner. A true gentleman. More than enough said.

We’ve reached a forlorn place if decency, humility and pragmatism are considered vices rather than virtues.
Perhaps some, not you Chris, would prefer he have a baseball cap on that reads “F–k SEC”, huh?

Man, I love it when you poke fun at Verne & Gary – please never stop that.
Stanford is a tough, good, disciplined team. Shaw has proven me to be wrong, but you’re right – too bad the country doesn’t recognize him or the team.

“Man, I love it when you poke fun at Verne & Gary – please never stop that.” @Brian
Ditto to that 🙂
Still not ready to completely buy in on Shaw yet, but he has done a good job keeping the culture Harbaugh built alive.